The sluggish economy has begun to slow cell phone sales: top handset research house Gartner has lowered its market growth forecast, and top phone-charger maker Salcomp has already warned on profits, Reuters is reporting.

"In the last month however, the economic environment started to negatively impact emerging markets as well as mature," Carolina Milanesi, head of mobile device research at Gartner, said in the article.

Last year, cellphone sales grew 16%. This year, analysts are forecasting that sales will again grow, but only 10% to 11% on average. There's also a bit of saturation at work here, since over 80% of the U.S. population already has a cell phone subscription and, presumably, at least one cell phone to use with it.

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